Rasmussen: Democrats at lowest point in generic-ballot polling in years

AllahpunditPosted at 5:15 pm on September 1, 2009

Smells like this is being driven more by anti-incumbency fever than anti-Democratic fever, but we’ll take it any way we can get it. Throw the bums out:

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 43% would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate while 36% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent.

That represents the lowest level of support for Democrats in recent years, while Republicans have tied their highest level of support for the third straight week. The previous low for Democrats over the past year was 37%…

Throughout the summer of 2008, support for Democratic congressional candidates ranged from 45% to 48%. Republican support ranged from 34% to 37%…

If Americans could vote to keep or replace the entire Congress, 57% would throw out all the legislators and start over again. Just 25% would vote to keep the Congress.

Even better: Per Ace, the latest PPP poll shows that the GOP leads 45/41 overall but 50/14 among voters who say they’re unhappy with both parties. The number who say they’d vote to reelect their congressman is just 47 percent. Is that enough to win back the House next year? Maybe not. Is it enough to make the Blue Dogs sweat even more about ObamaCare than they already are? You betcha.

Not a fan of generic-ballot polling? No problem. According to Nate Silver, historically there’s been a linear relationship between a president’s approval rating at the time of the midterms and the number of seats lost by his party. A 50 percent approval typically translates into a 26-seat pickup by the minority party; a 40-seat pickup, which is what the GOP would need to retake the House, would require a rating of around 42 percent. (As for 2012, anything north of 45 percent for an incumbent president would probably mean reelection.) Aside from Zogby’s outlier last night, The One’s still safely north of 42 percent, but the trends are not in his favor. Current split among independents, per the CNN poll released this afternoon: 43/53, the first time he’s ever been in negative territory among that group. Change has come to America, my friends.